Queensland Police, not content with the wealth of weapons its officers already have to terrorise marginalised people with, will be the first law enforcement agency in the world (aside from the US) to start using a fucked new taser that can be discharged 10 times before needing reloading.
The new Taser 10 can be used at a range of 13.7 metres, reports ABC News, which is three times the distance of the tasers QPS currently uses.
Both Police Minister Mark Ryan and Commissioner Katarina Carroll have confirmed 65 of the weapons have been purchased, which is pretty fkn concerning given how trigger happy the Queensland Police Service is to begin with.
ABC’S 7.30 revealed Queensland Police officers shot more people just last year than every other cop in the rest of Australia combined.
Carroll seems to think giving these “officers of the law” fancy new tasers will make people safer, which is an interesting claim given these cops had access to tasers the entire time anyway and still chose to shoot those people.
“If we give our officers the best possible training and equipment, it means that they are able to go into our communities and serve to the best of their abilities,” she said, per ABC News.
“The Taser 10, for instance, will provide an effective longer range, less lethal option to save lives and reduce harm to police and the community.”
Yeah, that’s all well and good, except that tasers are not always less lethal than guns, especially when officers don’t adequately de-escalate a situation.
In 2020, Queensland Police officers tasered an Aboriginal man six times, and he died shortly after.
Given the recent death of a 95-year-old dementia patient at the hands of a police officer who tasered her in NSW, you’d think we as a nation would re-evaluate arming an institution that clearly knows nothing about de-escalation with yet more dangerous weaponry.
Instead of investing in mandatory empathy and de-escalation training for officers who have a reputation for terrorising Aboriginal kids, using excessive force against protesters, threatening Indigenous men, sympathising with family killers and violating their own manuals in their illegal treatment of youth, our leaders have decided to give these freaks more power.
Wow, thanks. I feel so safe now.
